


drown.

by vhscassette



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Otasune
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 12:57:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19724122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vhscassette/pseuds/vhscassette
Summary: david doesn't know when to admit that he's lost his own game.





	drown.

The rain fell in clattering torrents against the cabin they were in. David tapped his foot impatiently, blindly- a habit he was merely used to- as he sat on a plain bunk bed. Hal had managed to track down an abandoned Girl Scout camp before a huge, tornado-hellspawn storm had hit their path in the Midwest.

And now, they wait.

"Y'think one'll hit us?" David asked, staring at the bottom of the bunk above him.

"Could, although I'm not sure where we'd go if there was."

"A ditch?"

"None around here. It's a _campground,_ not a highway."

"Any basement buildings?"

"All rotted out; this place hasn't been used in at _least_ forty years. We're lucky this cabin is even holding up."

"Underpass?"

Hal snickered, adjusting his glasses. "Well, of course. Where _else_ would we go? Right alongside running into the damn thing."

David smirked, a soft peal of laughter escaping his throat. With the storm and overall isolation effectively cutting off all means of connection, Hal resorted to playing Solitaire on his laptop.

"Y'got any movies on that thing?" David asked, sitting up on his elbows and glancing over at his form a bunk across.

"Uh.." Hal muttered, focused on his game. "Mostly anime movies. That is, unless you wanna get drenched in rain getting my other hard drive from the car."

"Rain never hurt anyone. Which ones?"

"I got two of the Sailor Moon ones- the _original,_ not Crystal- and a few One Piece, uh.. Evangelion, some seasons of Black Lagoon, and I _think_ the first few eps of Serial Experiments Lain."

"Can you repeat that in a language I understand?"

"Can you find a better way to pass the storm?"

Dave grinned, eye twitching. Hal only smiled back, saccharine sweet in that friendly, obnoxious way he had.

Hal's cards began bouncing along the screen at the tap of his finger-- a winning play.

* * *

It was around midnight, about half an hour after Hal surprisingly went to bed, that Dave noticed the cabin was leaking. At first it was a mere mirage to him, unsure in his sleepless daze if it had actually occurred, but then he realized the slow damp puddles that were beginning to form across the floor and on top of the bunks.

The water itself wasn't enough to keep him awake, though.

It was Hal screaming _Snake!_ around an hour later.

Dave jumped out of bed, eyes suddenly darting to pinpricks to inspect the cabin. In one quick, treading motion to Hal's bunk, he had checked under every single bed and every corner of the dead-dark room. Nothing.

"Hal, what's wrong?!" Snake barked, Hal's silhouette trembling in the darkness. 

Rain roared around them, a deep whirl of wind slamming against the already-leaking cabin and causing a very audible groaning noise from the foundation.

".. Snake," Hal weeped, Dave seeing his form reach for him in the dark, grabbing his hands before he could even back away.

"The- I f- I think I was drowning- _you_ were drowning," he managed to crack out, a bright-as-daylight flicker of lightning illuminating Otacon's face for half a second-- more than enough for Snake to analyze.

His eyes were lost in sleep, cheeks pale, tears rimming the edges of his snow-gray eyes. Death. Death and nightmares.

Dave grunted, Snake mode descending back into oblivion as the danger in his veins slowed down. He took one last precautionary look at the wet cabin before sitting down on Otacon's bunk beside him, glancing hard at the exhausted engineer.

Hal's hands shook as he held Dave's, his long, slim fingers curled harshly around Dave's thick and calloused ones. "I tried to get-- get my _boat_ to you-- and I-- well, I woke up and-- from the rain-- _fuck,_ who _cares,"_ Hal tearily said, the sleep still evident in his slurred voice as he moved to rub his eyes with his sleeve.

It wasn't the first time this had happened, Dave understood with a deep set frown. It was no mystery that Hal had some _serious_ trauma problems to deal with, none of which did Dave try to push away. It was only when one of these traumas happened to be _because_ of him that Dave felt frustrated. Trusting Hal meant that Hal gave him _all_ of him, and he didn't want to be responsible for the fall of Philanthropy due to some ridiculous emotions.

At least, that's what he told himself.

The thought of being Hal Emmerich's final nail in the coffin-- the man who would gladly give himself away for Snake's progression, the man who's lost everyone and _everything--_ drove him to something intangible and hard to grasp, _especially_ at one A.M.

"You need to cool down, Hal," Dave said sternly, noticing how Hal seemed to pause and _listen._ In mere moments, Hal was taking deep breaths and his trembling began to slow. Quietly, Dave repeated himself like a mantra-- "cool down, okay? cool down."

"Okay," Hal sniffled absently, Dave able to hear the teary warble in his throat, "okay. I'm-- I'm sorry. I keep getting this way--"

"You don't need to apologize for something out of your reach, Otacon," David said, staring firmly at the silhouette across from him. Another flicker of lightning showed Hal's glazed eyes, dusky hair needing a shower in the next day or so, exhaustion settled deep into his features.

"I'm just afraid of losing you too, David."

The rain continued to pummel the cabin.

Their gaze with eachother did not break, David's wide-awake mind somehow coming to a quiet standstill. Otacon, regardless of his sleepy stupor, knew what he had said whether he meant to speak it or not, and Dave couldn't destroy an insistent heartache in his chest.

It was quite literally the nature of his job to eventually be lost someday. 

Every day was another chance to be shot, another chance to fail, to send his life spiralling downwards into nothingness just as he was born to be. It only became a problem when someone loved him-

when he loved someone.

David remembered to breathe, silent and through his nose.

Otacon laughed, a soft, gentle chuckle. Tired, he said, "I know, Dave. You don't have to say anything. It's what we _do_ as Philanthropy. We could both die any day, any _time._ It's all for nothing to be worried because it may happen anyway."

David laid down on Otacon's bunk and dragged him down with him. He only struggled for a split second, not realizing the action, before he fell into it and laid across from Snake. 

Dave inhaled. "Hal."

"Yeah, Dave?"

"You're one of the only people who's ever cared about me."

The rain kept falling, leaking all over their cabin.

He continued at Otacon's silence. "I was not meant to love others, Otacon. I was meant to kill. _You_ feel everything that I wish I could."

The darkness of the night hid Hal's expression.

"If I died, Snake, would you miss me?"

David, for the first time in his life, felt afraid to answer truthfully not to his partner,

but to himself.


End file.
